Friday, June 28, 2013

First we get
Ouya, then came Gamepop
and now it seems Google is getting into the act with their own Android based console due out in the fall. Apparently,
Ouya's an idea worth copying with all these pretenders to the throne popping
up.

Ouya's sold
out in retail markets, that's good news.
The bad news is that many faithful supporters of the original
Kickstarter project are still waiting for their consoles to show up. Backers were supposed to be first in line but
a shipping snafu with DHL has left disappointed investors out in the cold.

"Just so disappointed and discouraged at this
point," said
Damian, who contributed to funding Ouya on Kickstarter. "And to think
of all the people and friends we've been effectively selling the console to on
your behalf. At least the non-backers can get the benefit of owning the
console."

"I am pissed. Some of you have not yet received your
Ouya -- and, to you, I apologize. I did not promise to ship to *most* of you
before we hit store shelves. I promised to ship to *all* of you,"

A minor shipping issue has managed to blossom into a PR nightmare
for the fledgling company that competitors are sure to capitalize on.

With Google getting into the act and Gamepop hot on
Ouya's heels it seems the old marketing adage of never wanting to be the one
who's first to market because they take all the lumps rings true. I guess they should've used UPS.

So if you're still fuming over the lackluster performance
of your 4 figure AMD crossfire setup, relief may be just around the corner. AMD has announced a driver update due out
July 31st via it's twitter feed.

For the uninitiated, it appears that AMD cards in
Crossfire have a serious performance issue directly related to drivers. An issue Nvidia doesn't exhibit and one that
has likely existed since the debut of multi GPU AMD/ATI configurations. More about the story here.

Microsoft
probably needs to fire its marketing department after the lambasting the
company took at E3 over their (former)
Xbox1 DRM policies. The pushback was so
heated that it was looking a lot like another Windows 8 launch in the making. You can thank Sony in part for that with
their playful demonstration of their DRM policy.

Microsoft's
missteps followed by Sony's $100 price undercut on the PS4 have made Sony's console
the early favorite. This week we found
out just how Sony was able to lop $100 off its price at the last minute. In short...

Where every
Xbox1 will come with a Kinect, the PS4 equivalent is now an add-on. If you care about motion control that might
be a problem for you. It's also a
potential problem for developers who have to decide if it's worth it to develop
software for a device without a guaranteed market.

From a
marketing standpoint the price drop has helped the PS4 in the short term. However, if the lack of a camera cripples the console and forces
consumers to spend the extra $100 anyway it could go badly for Sony.

Instead of
competing on features Sony is choosing to compete on price which could signal a
lack of confidence in their own platform.
The only saving grace here is that Microsoft doesn't appear to have any
allegiance to its own convictions either.

Why are
these guys so afraid of each other?

Looking for
an awesome midrange GPU that can leave AMD crying and Nvidia 670 owners fuming?
Then don't read the next paragraph.

Nvidia's
announced yet another GK104 based GPU and you should care especially if you
were looking at AMD's midrange cards. The new 760 will sell for $249 and has
basically the same performance as the GTX 670.
The specifications are in the table below...

Stream Proc.

Texture Units

ROPs

Core Clock

Boost Clock

Memory Clock

Memory Bus Width

VRAM

TDP

Trans.

Proc.

1152

96

32

980MHz

1033MHz

6GHz GDDR5

256-bit

2GB

170W

3.5B

TSMC 28nm

With equal
or better performance to AMD's 7950 at $30 to $50 less, AMD has something to
worry about again.Of course if you care
about game bundles, Nvidia still comes up short but what's a game worth if the
card it runs on is subpar?

Finally,

So, if
you've been following my blog for awhile you know that I picked up Grid 2 last
month and Dungeon Siege 3 a few weeks back.
Both were on sale and both have occupied enough of my time to put the
furniture in jeopardy due to game bugs.

So far, Grid
2 has been almost as enjoyable as the original game and the Racenet online
component has proved to be far less intrusive than EA's Autolog. That is, so long as you remember to set your
game mode to private when you're playing with friends. Of course if you don't mind surprise
competition horning in on your game just leave the default public setting
on. I'm still annoyed that I have to go
online to play with someone in the same room.

I've also
noticed random frame corruption showing up regardless of GPU, processor or
video settings. I've seen it on all 3 of
my game rigs and my friends dual GTX 680 setup as well.

Another
annoyance, car control, It can get a bit
dicey with minor contact with anything sometimes ending in a result reminiscent
of Test Drive Unlimited. In that game
any contact with another object caused your vehicle to go wildly out of
control. It's not as bad as that in Grid
2 but it's noticeable. With Grid 2
patches coming out every other day, hopefully the issue will be corrected. It's a fun game but right now it takes a bit
of patience to play it.

Dungeon
Siege 3, on the other hand, is so bad that it generated its own blog post. I've played it for about 4
hours now and while I'm getting used to the wild camera angles, poor player
control and the wonky game save system I'm still annoyed with it. I can't stomach more than an hour at a time
with it. The game actually has about 50
achievements you can earn on Steam which seems ambitious considering how bad
the game mechanics are. Looking at the
global achievement stats it appears fewer than 10% of players bother to even
finish the game. There's one achievement
in particular that amuses me. It's
earned simply by playing with a friend for 3 hours straight in cooperative mode.

Monday, June 24, 2013

I'm a sucker for a good Steam Sale especially if it's on a
title I wanted to try but was too fearful of the Metacritic Reviews to shell
out the $$$ for.

The old adage is true, you get what you pay for.

Considering I paid $3.74 for Dungeon Siege 3 I almost feel
like I got what I paid for. This latest
installment of the series lets you play as one of 4 different character
types. All with unique abilities and
following the standard RPG template.

Lucas Montbarron is basically the soldier class, Anjali is
an archon which falls somewhere between a mage and a fighter, Reinhart Manx is
a mage and Katarina is pretty much a thief with some magical ability.

The premise of the game is that you are one of the few
remaining descendants of the 10th Legion which in typical RPG fare were the
guardians of all things good and light.
The game starts about 30 years after a big bad witch (Jeyne Kassynder)came
along and wiped out the 10th Legion which makes everyone sad.

Within the first 5 minutes you'll instantly recognize that
the camera angles and player controls were an afterthought. Playing it for a few hours and having ample
opportunity to see the exact same scenery so often (because I kept dying so
much) I got the impression that visuals trumped game mechanics.

The game does look very good, which is the extent of my
praise.

Wildly fluctuating camera angles, vague character controls
and a meaningless skill tree make playing the game an exercise in
frustration. I actually bought a copy
for a friend so we could play co-op. I
mean, what did I have to lose for less than $10 right?

Without going into detail, after 15 minutes of setting out on a new co-op campaign he
said, "I'm not playing this."
I'm trying to give this thing a fair shake as I've hated other games
initially only to find that it was just a matter of getting used to the nuances
to make it enjoyable. It isn't the case
here.

This isn't my first RPG.
I actually started with Dungeon Siege 2, went on the Dragon Age:Origins,
Torchlight, Oblivion and Skyrim. My
friend adds at least a dozen other RPGS to that list.

So what specifically is wrong with the game? Knowing that I don't have a lot of room to
complain having paid only $3.74 I truly feel for those who actually paid $60
for it. If that was you I feel your
pain. It's why I waited so long to try
it out.

Let's start with the most glaring problem, camera
control. In Dungeon Siege 2 the camera
controls could get a bit wonky but usually would keep your character in
view. in Dungeon Siege 3 you traverse
the maps in fear of sudden camera changes that leave you essentially blind
amidst a gaggle of bloodthirsty enemies.
If you watch the video above you'll see more than one example. I never play an RPG in extreme close-up view
but apparently DS3 thinks it's advantageous.
Luckily my female character was rendered attractively so that I could at
least enjoy her looks as she lay unconscious on the ground.

You quite literally live in fear not of the enemy combatants
but rather of a sudden camera change you had nothing to do with.

Character control is almost as bad as directionality is as
vague as trying to parallel park a cruise ship.
The suggestion of a direction is there but it's not guaranteed. Which leads to the inevitable camera change
when you venture too close to a wall, tree, enemy or anything else the game
engine thinks you need to see in glorious HD.

The next complaint is the complete change in inventory
mechanics. Gone are health and mana
potions replaced instead by powerups gained either from looting chests or
dispatching enemies. If you're the hit
and fade type who likes to drop back for a quick swig of the red stuff this
game isn't for you. That's because there
isn't any red stuff. Even if there was
there's no way to assign an inventory item for quick use anyway.

You earn XP and level up in the usual way but the skill
trees are an unintelligible mess. I
ended up just dropping my "proficiency points" anywhere that would
just get me out of the interface quickly.
Worse you're forced to assign your points when earned. Even in the middle of battle you have to stop
everything and click madly just to get rid of the dialogs. My supposed gains from all this annoyance did
little to advance my fortunes. I still
ended up dead, a lot.

Another thing you'll notice is that you don't have a lot of
freedom in the game. You're lead down a
very narrow and tightly controlled path.
No running off in the heather to battle possessed wildlife. Whatever you fight is going to be right in
front of you and you usually have no avenue of retreat.

Even better, enemies tend to surround and dispatch you long before
you can even hope to beat a hasty retreat.
You can end up replaying the same mission over and over again and never
gain an inch of ground. I'm still
wondering if I'll ever exit the Stormsong Cavern.

Speaking of over and over again.

If you're the type that likes the freedom to save a game
wherever you want, forget it. Saves only
happen at predetermined points marked by pillars of fire and if you don't
manually save a game at that point you'll end up starting over from the
beginning should things go badly for you.

Autosaves don't
exist, well not useful ones anyway. I
have an autosave, for example, that takes me back to a point where I was about
30 seconds into the start of the game.
Considering I had played for an hour when I had need of it, I wasn't
impressed.

Lest we forget the "corrupted save" notices and the
Steam sync errors that you'll inevitably run into.

Let me sum it up.

Look, I know I only paid 3 bucks for this game but I hoped
that in 2 years Square Enix would have at least TRIED to fix some of these
bugs. I've seen exactly two patches come
down for this game which tells me that nobody really cares anymore.

I desperately want to enjoy this game at some level even if
it's only staring at the seductively rendered female characters. Unfortunately I only get to experience that
when they're lying on the ground deceased and I'm not into necrophilia.

The previous game, Dungeon Siege 2, was crafted by Gas
Powered Games and Microsoft Studios.
This one's got nothing in common with it save the first two words in its
title. Obsidian and Square Enix have
managed to create an RPG version of Postal 3.

Glad I didn't pay much for it but given the circumstances I
still feel a bit ripped off.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Remember when everyone was bashing Microsoft for their
"always-on" requirements for the Xbox 1? It seems like only yesterday....because it
pretty much was. Wednesday, Microsoft effectively reversed their DRM policy dropping the always-on requirement as well as the
restrictions on used games. The company
also relented on the 24 hour check-in and promised that all downloaded Xbox 1
games will run regardless of whether you're online.

I'm of two minds on this.
On one hand we saw the potential for yet another failed Microsoft
product launch, averted. Windows 8 may
show the way to the future but consumers weren't ready to be forced into
it. Like most Windows operating systems
Windows 8's only hope is preloads on tablets and their captive corporate
customer base. As such it really isn't a
pure consumer product despite appearances to the contrary.

But...

The Xbox 1 isn't an operating system, it's a consumer device
heavily dependent on discretionary income that will live or die by popular
opinion. With last week's playful PS4 demonstration of the relative lack of restrictions on the secondary PS4
game market, the future of the Xbox 1 was at a crossroads. The entire franchise was in jeopardy if
Microsoft didn't relent. So score 1 for
the consumer.

Here's the other side.
The move was typical Microsoft. In
the same mixed message that Microsoft sends with every new edition of Windows,
consumers know that they'll get what they want if they howl loud enough. It's the reason why support for long obsolete
hardware and software crowd bloat your Windows directory. It's hard to leap ahead when you're dragging
along so much baggage. It seems
Microsoft doesn't have enough faith in its own vision to change anything but
its mind.

So much for the new paradigm.

So if you were already aware that the extra scratch you
shell out for an Intel "K" series processor has been quietly ripping
you off since the release of the Ivy-Bridge then this isn't news.

Ripping me off? but I've got an unlocked multiplier you
say!

Yes you do, in fact the new Haswell "K" series
processors are the only members of the family that will allow any overclocking at all. Even the
turbo tweaks have been removed. You
don't get so much as the 400Mhz bump unless yours has a "K" after the
name. Ok, well, I guess that makes sense
except that there's also been a trade-off for that price premium.

It's been confirmed that features like VT-d, TSX memory
extensions and vPro security extensions have been removed from the K series of
processors. It's been theorized that
this was to curb those of us too cheap to come up with the 4 figures it takes
to get equivalent performance from a Xeon platform.

So no cheap servers for you!

Even if you wait around a year for Haswell-E and are willing
to take the hardware price hit because of a new socket (2011-3) and new RAM
(DDR4) you're still out of luck if you care about having all the features the
platform can provide.

Most K series buyers could probably care less if all they're
doing is using the platform to make their eyeballs bleed in Battlefield 4. Still, the fact that you pay more and get
fewer features, even if you won't use them, seems like a hostile position for
Intel to take.

These days most of these features are probably irrelevant
but the very act of consciously removing them for no other reason than to screw
your consumers is reprehensible.

Of course I suppose you could compare it to those ultra rare
supercars they make in Europe. They're
really fast, look really cool and you've got to have serious cash to own
them. Thing is, most of them don't have
so much as a radio to listen to let alone AC or power windows. I suppose if you're ok with that line of
thinking then Intel's strategy makes sense.

Did you ever look at your gaming laptop and wish you could
stuff an Nvidia GTX 680 in there? You
can!

Well, almost if you buy the new MSIGT 70 Gaming laptop with the GTX 780M.
The 780M is basically and underclocked GTX 680 with the same 1536 CUDA
cores, 256Bit memory bus and 4GB of DDR5 memory. It's downclocked about 200Mhz from its
desktop cousin and has a lower Thermal profile but you won't notice.

Both AMD and Nvidia are currently in a GPU war the likes of
which we haven't seen on the desktop in years.
See AMD's8970M for proof.

Let's face it, AMD or
NVIDIA usually fail on their drivers and
not their hardware these days. In the
mobile space, however, it's all about the hardware and the battle is taking
mobile hardcore gaming in the right direction.
All the power of the top end of desktop gaming cards in a thermally and
more power efficient package, that's real innovation.

Finally,

We've got a launch date for Nvidia Shield and a price drop.
In the continuing saga of the cool gaming device with no purpose comes
news that the handheld controller with its own console built in will be hitting
the shelves on June 27th. It'll also be
$50 cheaper at $299.

Which, other than their used games policy, was the only real burning question left in the mind of E3 attendees. The rest is just filler after that.

We also know that Sony is taking a more consumer friendly
route when it comes to used games meaning you can give your physical media to
somebody else and it just works. This
differs from the confusing vagaries of the onetime transfer policy of Microsoft. At least we know that the price of triple-A
console titles will stay

at the $60 price point. Both
Microsoft and Sony have confirmed it.
Not that it's a reasonable price point but at least it isn't getting
worse, yet.

The Oculus Rift made an appearance and instead of everybody
complaining about motion sickness, they were raving about a game demo. Eve-VR is a space battle game that takes
full advantage of the VR headgear allowing journalists to focus on gaming
instead of their supply of Dramamine.
Along with the demos came a rumor that the PS4 may support the Oculus
Rift. That rumor started when someone
found out that developer of Eve-VR, CCP, has been working closely with Sony
recently. Considering CCP's game was
chosen to show off the VR gaming headgear, it wouldn't be an unreasonable
assumption.

So what about Battlefield 4?
Well there was "Pre-Alpha" gameplay at E3. The game looked good but not quite ready for primetime meaning all the 12 year olds in the forums were already complaining about
glitches. Damage effects and destructible
environments helped make the most of the experience with live action looking as good as BF3's cut scenes. Check out replays of the live game stream here.

To stir up the hype a bit more EA decided to let loose with
an unlock code for current owners of BF3.
The E3 special unlock code"BF3E3" will open up the "Close Quarters"
multiplayer map. One last hurrah for
this dying edition of the franchise.
Check out EA's Origin site and you're likely to find BF3 Premium for
half price.

Be sure to check out the links above. After all, those guys were there and I
wasn't...

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Unless you really care about the change of voice actors in the next Batman or Splinter Cell or are in a lather over
somebody possibly spoiling the upcoming "The Last of Us" (Hint: they didn't) This week's news was pretty light.

I know the high point of my week was taking advantage of a
Steam midweek madness sale on Dungeon Siege 3 for $4.
Hey, the cutscenes should be worth at least that, right? It was so cheap I gifted a copy to a
friend. Share the fun or the misery I
say!

We have a little better idea of what the world of console gaming as envisioned by Microsoft
is after the Xbox 1 launches. Microsoft
is taking a hands off approach to dealing with the secondary market and instead
deferring to the whims of game publishers.

The cliff notes
version is this:

You have to have an Internet connection but you can play
offline for up to 24 hours ( 1 hour if you're on someone else's console). In related cheery news, Redmondville says
you're out of luck till you get your Internet connection back up but at least
you're free to watch TV or Blu-Ray discs.

You can't loan disc based games but you can give them
away, once. The other catch is that the
recipient has to be on your friends list for at least 30 days.

Microsoft is leaving it up to game publishers on how to
deal with the secondary market.

At least at launch, the rental game market for Xbox 1 is
pretty much dead.

Hmm, Seems kind of passive -aggressive with just a dash of "because
we can" thrown in for good measure.

If Microsoft would have taken this attitude with Windows operating
systems maybe Windows 8 wouldn't have been such a flop.

Still, It all pales
in comparison to what's about to happen next week at E3. We're promised some actual meat on the bones
when it comes to the PS4 and Xbox 1 with hardware and game demos galore. We shall see on June 11th.

Now that that's out of the way lets take a quick look back
at the high points of last month...

....crickets...

....crickets...

...ok so that's over...

But seriously, The
biggest news of the month was the Xbox1 reveal. Where we saw games but no
hardware back in the February PS4 announcement.
The Xbox 1 event showed us one game and a whole lot of silly marketing
people getting excited over watching TV.
I asked the question of whether this was the console to rule them
all. If you're more than a casual gamer
I think you're more interested in the PS4.
If you're looking for a cheap HTPC, this is probably your box.

May also saw the launch of Grid 2 and having spent more time with
the online portion of it I can say this.
I like the driving but the multiplayer interface sucks. I still don't see why it's so hard for
publishers to understand that I'd rather play a game with my friends over a gigabit Ethernet connection than on my cable connection! Especially when I'm in the same room.

Here's a hint, if you want to set up a private game, make
sure to turn off public visibility. Sorry
Codemasters, I may have a social media account but that doesn't mean I want to
race against all my Facebook friends.

The game is almost as good as the original save the online
component. I give it an 8/10.

Nvidia also dropped a bomb that surprised a lot of people in May
announcing that the Shield wasn't just an engineering exercise. The Shield dropped and nobody really cared.
I'm still thinking this is a solution in search of a problem. It's a neat concept but like most of my ADD
afflicted generation it'll undoubtedly end up in my closet on top of some old Atari
Lynx games.

AMD announced their new Volcanic Islands GPU's which appear to borrow heavily from their APU
designs with both serial and parallel processing units onboard. More than just a graphics card, there's some
actual computing horsepower here for something other than rendering sexy
mascots in a demo. Why you should care
as a gamer has little to do with that stuff, however. AMD's pushing the 20nm process which means
everyone else (meaning Nvidia) will be soon to follow. Better performance, more processing power and
lower power consumption are a step in the right direction.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Back on the Grid...2, GTX 780, Ouya's got competition, and
Sony says nothing

I've been literally waiting for years. Through Dirt, Dirt 2, Dirt 3 and two versions
of F1 the question that came to mind with every release was, Where's Grid 2?

It's not that the other games were bad, to the contrary,
they were pretty good. In fact after
spending a considerable amount of time with Dirt I began noticing the
similarities between it and Grid. It's a
lot like how Jimmy Paige's rifts are unmistakable no matter what band he's
playing with.

But it still wasn't Gird, that was, until Tuesday.

That was when the anticipation was over and Steam let us
revisit an old friend. Grid 2 is
immediately recognizable to a fan of the original. From the opening race sequence to your first
car rolling into the garage the game feels like a comfortable pair of
shoes. What's different is also familiar
to anyone who's played Dirt.

The World Series of racing is basically the single player
mode similar to the first game. What's
different about it is the story. Just
like Dirt, somebody was impressed by your antics in the opening race sequence
and wants to throw money at you so you can do it some more. That's not a bad thing but I'm hopeful that
the game doesn't spend more time on the story than the racing. That's a big reason Test Drive:
Unlimited 2 was such a flop. More on that later.

Online mode exposes the new Racenet platform where you can
play against your friends. I haven't found
a LAN mode so just like its Need For Speed competition you have to go online to
race someone in the same room.

So far I'm impressed, graphics are good, car control is
better than Need For Speed and I look forward to many hours of gameplay. Unlike Test Drive Unlimited 2 which I
uninstalled in 30 minutes...

If you were lucky enough to pre-order the game on Steam you
got it for $44.99 plus 3 DLC unlocks.
I've yet to use any of them but fear not, like every triple-A title
that's come out for the past 3 years there's a "DLC Store" available
in game if you want them later on. I'm
sure there'll eventually be a Steam sale to make them affordable as well.

Nvidia's released a new video card based on the GK110 GPU
and its list price is $649, that's the good news. Before you go running off thinking you're going
to get a rebranded Titan, however, you
may want to hold your horses a bit.

See, it is a GK 110 but unlike the Titan it's only got 3GB
of memory, 2 fewer streaming processors (12), 32 less texture units and 384 fewer streaming processors. In effect, it's a gimped Titan as all other
specs are the same. That includes the
power draw by the way. Nvidia's tried to
compensate by upping the core and boost clocks
but it's still lower than the GTX680's 1Ghz plus clocks.

Here's my take. If
you're still running with an old 5 series Nvidia card it's not a bad deal
although the price point is still a bit high.
The Titan would be perfectly priced
at the 780's price point but that's not going to happen any time
soon.

In short, it's a decent card, still a bit overpriced but
then what video card isn't these days.
TWIT has a show called Before you Buy. It's a tech products review show where they
give ratings of Try, Buy or Don't buy.
In my opinion, this one's only a Buy if you're a few generations behind
and can get a rebate. Otherwise it's
just filler till Nvidia has something to challenge AMD in the fall.

It was bound to happen.
Do something different and the imitators will line up. Especially true if your backers feel left out
when something interesting is happening in their market space.

So here comes another Android (Jellybean 4.2) based alternative to the XBOX and PS4 consoles. It's called BlueStacks Gamepop and unlike
Ouya it's backed by hardware heavyweights like Qualcomm, AMD, Intel Capital and
Korean game developer Com2US.

If the name sounds familiar, BlueStacks is the same company
that makes an app player that lets you play Android games on your desktop. With mixed results I might add. BlueStacks assures us that the technology is
separate from its app player. So why am
I having flashbacks to Jon Lovitz's "Pathological Liar" character?

Unlike Ouya, the BlueStacks Gamepop promises paid games with
its $129 purchase price. Coincidentally
the games that come with the Bluestacks console are worth $30. Ouya comes with no paid games with its $99
price point. In effect, it's a wash.

This looks more like an also ran than a real competitor to
me. For one thing, Ouya's backed by
gamers, Game industry execs and developers.
Otherwise known as people who know gaming. Bluestacks is primarily backed by hardware
makers. The fact that AMD is involved
isn't lost on me either. It seems like
just another petty Nvidia versus AMD battle.

In short, I don't believe BlueStacks has its heart in the
right place and will likely be forgotten a year from now.

With last week's Xbox 1 announcement and Microsoft's
subsequent answer of "kinda" to the used games question, anyone who
cares was asking, what about the PS4?

The resounding silence was deafening. Sony has not released any official statement
and instead leaves the pundits hoping for more than ambiguous scraps of news at
the upcoming E3. All we know at this
point is that Sony itself won't enforce any requirement for online game registration
but game publishers are free to do as they please.